뉴스레터

A hundred and ten years ago, an imperialist war was waged between Russia and Japan over the control of Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula. Having acquired Taiwan as its first colony by winning the Sino-Japanese War, Japan had to fight this war before it could annex the Korean Peninsula by force in 1910. Contrary to the expectations of the neighboring countries, Japan gained the upper hand in the war, eventually occupying the entire Korean Peninsula in 1904 and turning the Korean Empire into its protectorate in 1905. Japan touted the Russo-Japanese War as the triumph of Japan as a constitutional state successfully civilized early on over Russia as an autocratic state.

His Growing Thought and Advocacy Against War

t that time, Japan was a fledgling capitalist nation, too, struggling internally with serious social issues resulting from the rapid industralization forced upon itself after the Sino-Japanese War. Therefore, Japan needed to resolve social contradictions by paving the way for integration within the country while trying to convince its people that the two wars won and the colonies acquired represented abundance brought to them as a reward for their patriotism and faithfulness to the emperor. To this end, Japan needed to remove two obstacles: 1) the group of revolutionaries who dreamed of turing Japanese society upside down; and 2) the independent sovereignty of the Korean Empire. And the moves to remove these two obstacles were made at the same time. Japan turned the Korean Empire into its colony by concluding the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910, and charged Kotoku Shusui (幸德秋水, 1871-1911), a representative Japanese revolutionary, with plotting to assassinate the emperor and executed him for 'high treason.' This completed Japan as an imperialist power.

Kotoku Shusui was a revolutionary in the late Meiji period who started out as a journalist at a time when the ideas of overthrowing the militaristic regime and establishing democracy were considered revolutionary, and involved himself in the democratic rights movement. Faced with social contradictions, he became a first-generation social activist focused on parliamentary politics. But when he decided that the socialist movement had turned into nationalism, he eventually involved himself in a plan for world revolution known as anarchist communism, until he was executed. The path he walked seems to be reminiscent of the fate of Korea being reduced to a colony. But it wasn't that he opposed the colonization of Korea from the beginning. At the time when he had become a democratic rights activist while learning Chinese classics, Kotoku believed that an ideal royal society could be realized only by establishing a constitutional government based on the will of the people. For this reason, he often made arguments in foreign policy that resonated with imperialism, including exercising military power and including Korea within the sphere of Japan's power, for the reason that doing so was consistent with the will and interest of the people.

But disappointed and discouraged to watch the government and parliament in a corrupt relationship with business, he took notice of the ethical aspect of socialism, an ideology that began to be introduced to the late 19th-century Japanese society riddled with the labor issue. He redefined the word 'people' to mean the many 'people' exploited by the few rather than the 'people' embracing a minority ruling class like capitalists, politicians, or warlords. And he came to think that an ideal ethical society would be impossible to realize without changing the capitalist society that "deprived the many of their well-being for the desire of the few" into a socialist society. Consequently, he also changed his view on war, no longer tolerating the wars of aggression for territorial expansion. Now he saw that the cause of war was rooted in economic competition, and believed that giving up capitalism was the only way to prevent war.

This belief led him to advocate against the Russo-Japanese War while most of the intellectuals supported it, and establish the Commoner's Society in 1903. It mobilized the socialist forces that had been confined to the podium and turned them into real social forces. They argued that war would benefit no one but the ruling class and it would only destroy the life and freedom of a majority of the people regardless of its outcome. Noting that the same went for the people of Russia, the country Japan was fighting, they argued that the solidarity of the proletariat beyond the borders was the only way to realize world peace. And they made an anti-war declaration together with Russian socialists, adding a new page to the history of the world anti-war movement.

While in the anti-war movement, Kotoku came to identify the Korean people with his own in terms of their class, and started opposing Japan's act of aggression against its neighboring countries. Kotoku's denial of Japan's aggression against Korea came about because he had expanded his thought while acquiring the idea of socialism.

The Development of His Thought for Peace in Asia

An Ahn Jung-geun postcard with
a Chinese poem by Kotoku Shusui
written on it (reproduced later in
San Francisco once on its release
was banned in Japan)

After the 1905 Russian Revolution, he denied the German-style social democratic parliamentary politics aimed at legally securing a majority of seats through general suffrage, and converted to the Russian-style direct action aimed at realizing socialism through the union of workers and a general strike as the means of revolution. Afterwards, he had a profound impact in various ways on Asian revolutionaries studying in Japan through active interaction with them. He argued that the class solidarity of the Asian people would prevent war and bring peace and well-being, which showed that his understanding of Asian revolutionaries, whose countries were in danger of turning into colonies, longing for national independence was incomplete and limited.

However, while the press at that time described Ahn Jung-geun, who had assassinated Ito Hirobumi, with such phrases as "cut his own finger," "brutal and ferocious," and "a paranoia," Kotoku praised Ahn as a Confucian martyr and patriot. Kotoku regarded Japan, which at the time was brutally oppressing the social progressives, as an autocratic state that could restrict the people's rights at any time, not a modern constitutional monarchy. On the other hand, Kotoku saw the self-sacrificing patriot, such as Ahn Jung-geun, to have practiced the Confucian ideology that recognized revolution against monarchs who failed to run a benevolent government.

But Japan eventually executed Ahn Jung-geun, who had advocated peace in Asia and assassinated Ito Hirobumi, and proceeded to annex Korea by force in the name of advocating peace in Asia all the same. And Japan murdered Kotoku Shusui and other revolutionaries in the name of state for the crime of high treason threatening the authority of the Emperor system. In other words, Japan completed its imperial system by colonizing external territory and crushing internal opponents.

Then what is the point of us calling Kotoku Shusui back from history now? I think that it is to appreciate his active pacifism once again in order to resist the ideologies of imperialists and militarists willing to wage war and exploit colonies.